Android App Video Review: Dizzy - Prince of the Yolkfolk

Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk is a great remake of an old school puzzle platformer from the early nineties. It's a great revival of an all too briefly recognized gaming icon. His popularity may have been short lived, but Codmasters has brought Dizzy out of retirement for this Android port, and it's awesome. It's plagued by plenty of technical issues, but it's a great game overall.

For those who don't know, DIzzy is an intelligent anthropomorphic egg with red boxing gloves who had a great run in the late eighties and early nineties before disappearing. He lives in the fantasy kingdom of Keldor with all the other Yolkfolk, not to mention plenty of other odd creatures. In this adventure, Dizzy and his Girlfriend Daisy were out looking for some cherries to make a cherry pie when they stumbled upon a magic spinning wheel. Daisy pricks her finger on the wheel and is put to sleep, and before he can do anything about it, Dizzy is captured and imprisoned by Rockwart the troll. It's time for you to egg up, escape the prison, defeat the troll, and make that pie!

He's named dizzy due to the way he somersaults, flips, and rolls everywhere he goes. You can either jump straight up or on preset diagonal arcs as you navigate the 2D world. Along the way, you'll pick up various items which can be used in conjunction with other items or traded with the various NPC's to solve a bevy of riddles and puzzles. It is possible to die in this game, but the remake gives us the gift of infinite lives, as opposed to the three lives of the original game. There have been some other changes to the formula that nostalgic old fans will probably not be pleased with, but I loved this game. It plays out more like a classic adventure title than a platformer, with more focus on the puzzles and wide variety of kooky characters you'll encounter.

One thing that bothered me with this title is the fact that you are automatically given obvious hints to help solve the puzzles after a certain amount of time. You can collect stars to delay the countdown, but there really should be an option to turn this off entirely. Also, while it didn't bother me very much, many people will probably dislike the tedium that comes with walking back and forth across the map as you try to figure out your next move.

The new HD art is fantastic, and I absolutely loved this new look. The updated and redone soundtrack is excellent, though it plays on a loop that will probably annoy many people. I never got tired of it though. Where this game really fails is in the programming department. People are reporting tons of game breaking bugs and glitches, not to mention crashing issues. Not only did the game crash on me a couple times, but the saving system is totally broken. I can't discern any way to load an old save slot, even though there are three slots to choose from. OpenFeint achievements are supported here as well. You can relive this piece of history from gaming's golden days for just two dollars. Hopefully these issues are fixed in future updates, and I can't wait to see what other old ghosts from Codemaster's long past will see new life on the Android Market.